A Low Bar for Earnings

Corporate profits were far from strong last quarter, but investors now seem ready to put the melodrama of elections and the fiscal cliff behind them.

By

Kopin Tan

January 12, 2013

By

Kopin Tan

January 12, 2013

A stock market perched at fresh five-year highs is vulnerable to many excuses for a pullback, but the fourth-quarter results companies are now reporting won't be one of them.

It isn't that corporate profits last quarter were good. On the contrary, listen to enough analysts—an occupational hazard for us—and you'd think all commerce slowed to a halt during the melodrama over our elections and the fiscal cliff. Maybe it's the new start offered by the flip of a calendar, but investors now seem ready—no, eager—to put that all...